The second WSCS Student Exchange Grant has been awarded to Lucia Snyderman. We will let her introduce herself:
My name is Lucia Snyderman and I’m a PhD Researcher at the Zoological Society of London and University of Reading researching the past ecology and extirpation dynamics of sturgeon in the UK. I study historical archives as well as museum and archaeological sturgeon specimens with ancient DNA to understand which species were native where and when in UK rivers, genetic diversity through time, and identify historically important habitat and drivers of population decline. I am working with the UK Sturgeon Alliance to build an evidence base and directly apply my research findings to inform sturgeon reintroduction planning in the UK. With this grant, I will travel to Sweden in May 2026 to learn from and contribute to the sturgeon reintroduction efforts there, led by Linnéa Jägrud and Joacim Näslund, about the quantity, quality, and typology of evidence used and their relative importance in reintroduction planning. I will specifically focus on how historical data was used and applied in the reintroduction, and take what I learn to develop my PhD, future career in conservation, and contribute to the UK Sturgeon Alliance and sturgeon conservation.
